She Couldn't Believe Tweens Were Still Getting Their Ears Pierced at the Mall. Now Her Company Is On Track to Make $100 Million. How do you find a working business model? Do it like Rowan—a brand that reinvented itself many times before finally piercing the ear-piercing market.

If you have a tween girl, you've probably heard of Rowan. It's the cool brand for piercings, where licensed nurses insert hypoallergenic studs into thousands of ears every day. With more than 500 employees, it's on track to have 65 stores and an annual run rate of $100 million in revenue this year.

But in 2017, Rowan was just a fledgling startup with a great idea and a bad business model. It survived because founder Louisa Schneider was willing to pivot, and pivot, and pivot again, until its mission, profit, and market all clicked into place.

Here, she explains how she threaded that tricky needle — and kept her eye on the hole.

Related: Knowing When — and How — to Pivot Is Key to Your Business' Survival. Here's What You Need to Do.

Step 1: Enter the market.

Back in 2017, Schneider was a new mom working at a hedge fund, and found herself reminiscing about her own childhood. She remembered getting her ears pierced at a mall, and was struck by how that experience had never been updated. Why aren't piercings done by medical professionals now? she wondered.

That's why she launched Rowan. It began as a concierge service in New York City, where nurses would go to the customer's home to do the piercing, and was packaged with an online monthly subscription to earrings. People quickly started booking appointments.

Step 2: Test what people want.

After a couple of years, customers started to ask if she had a store. Schneider was intrigued. Her subscription offering had proven challenging, because with trends changing so rapidly, it was difficult to forecast how much inventory to stock. Would a retail model be better? "I was always looking at what could go wrong and how can I actually make money here," she says. "The numbers pointed to the piercing piece of the business."

So a store it was. She raised money, got a good pandemic-era deal on a lease in Manhattan's Upper East Side (where her best customers lived), and opened up. The place took off.

Schneider started to think about expansion, and then got a dream opportunity...

Related: Her Startup's Product Was Better and Cheaper Than the Competition, So Why Wasn't It Selling? The Answer Would Bring In $25 Million a Year

Step 3: Follow the opportunity.

Target reached out, she says, to discuss Rowan operating kiosks inside its stores. Schneider was thrilled, won the RFP, and set up in 300 of the retail giant's locations in 2021 and 2022. The deal attracted a lot of customers and attention, but it had an unexpected downside: Operations and logistics were very complicated, and Schneider's brand struggled to grow. As it turns out, all those customers left thinking they'd gotten their ears pierced at Target, not Rowan.

By the end of 2022, Schneider faced a second hard decision: Stay with Target, or pivot again? "They were a great partner," she says. "But I learned it's very hard to build a brand in someone else's four walls. And I saw I wasn't going to be profitable doing that. So we exited."

Importantly, she says, she did it with no regrets. Instead, she focused on the bright side — crucial, she says, when you're making big changes. The deal was a huge validator for her brand, and it attracted a nationwide network of nurses willing to work with her. "So guess what? It was worth it."

Step 4: Refocus on what works.

Schneider doubled down on building out her own stores and brand. To drive e-commerce, she spent a lot of money on influencers — but it didn't pay off. Then she discovered the value of networking with very different kinds of influencers: pediatricians and dermatologists, who would refer patients, as well as mom groups, who would write good reviews and spread the word.

Now Rowan is expanding its own jewelry line — and, ironically, it might even consider a subscription model again. "We get asked for it," Schneider says. "Earrings are so easy to lose."

Related: If You Don't Learn How to Pivot Your Business, You'll Watch It Perish — Here's What a Successful Pivot Looks Like.